5 Things to Eat at Taiwan Night Market (Travel Vlog)

Introducing 5 original Taiwanese “xiaio-chi” that I tried while visiting Taiwan night market.

While we spent 2 months in Japan this past summer, we took a quick side trip with Mr. JOC to his hometown, Kaohsiung, Taiwan to visit his family. During our short stay, we tried to eat as many Taiwanese foods as we can. We also visited the local Liuhe Night Market (六合夜市) where we got to taste unique Taiwanese street foods known as xiao-chi (小吃).

Before heading there, I asked JOC fans on Facebook what foods I should eat at a Taiwan night market and I picked the top 5 choices.

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Watch Taiwan Night Market Vlog (台湾の夜市で食べたもの）

Street Foods You Must Eat at Taiwan Night Market

If you visit Taiwan, one of the activities I highly recommend is to stroll around the local night market. It opens late at night so even if you had planned a full day of sightseeing and fun plans, you can still enjoy a late night snack before going to bed. 😉

Compared to Japanese street festivals with food stalls that occur mostly during the summer time, Taiwanese night markets are available every night! For a foreign visitor like me, night market food stalls have the most unique and rare foods you only see in Taiwan.

I’ve been to night markets in both Kaohsiung and Taipei, and it’s always fun to eat and find something interesting and new! As we had limited time this trip, we focused on five foods recommended and requested by JOC fans on Facebook. Let’s get started!

1. 3 Cup Snake

Have you had snake meat before? I never tried it and didn’t know what to expect. I just assumed it would taste like chicken…. just like the time I tried deep fried frog legs in Taiwan night market.

Well, the snake was prepared and seasoned with the sauce that tastes exactly like the popular Taiwanese 3 Cup Chicken dish. So if I close my eyes and eat, I wouldn’t know I was eating the snake meat. In fact, I barely had the proper amount of “meat” when I was eating 3 Cup snake because there were way too many bones. I had trouble getting the pieces out of my mouth as the bones don’t fall off easily.

Taste wise, it’s pretty good! As I imagined, it tasted just like chicken. 😉

2. Eel Noodles

This Taiwanese noodle dish consists of chewy thick noodles with stir fried eels and cabbage poured on top. The wok char eels and cabbage give great flavors to the dsh and the sauce coats well with the noodles. Eels in Japan are more fatty and tender when you eat Unagi Donburi, but these Taiwanese eels have crunchy texture to them. It’s a great dish to fill up if you’re craving for a substantial meal at the night market. I’ve had this before and it’s one of my go-to night market foods.

3. Oyster Omelette

If I have to list one food that I had real trouble eating while growing up, that would be oyster. My mom would make oyster fries (it’s panko coated and deep fried, and it sounds delicious but that doesn’t disguise the oyster texture and taste), and she would make me eat at least one piece when she prepares it. After a few decades, I still hate it. So the oyster omelet was not something I’d pick if I get to choose a dish at the night market.

Well, this time I didn’t have a choice! I actually had this dish before, but every time I would skip the oyster part and enjoy the rest of eggs, glutinous rice flour, and scallions mixture with the sweet savory sauce. It’s really good and I especially love the chewy glutinous rice texture (after all I’m a big mochi fan). You’ll see my full review on this dish in the video.

4. Duck Tongue & Duck Blood Cake

I’ve eaten duck tongues at dim sum before, but it’s still “strange” for me to look at it before I eat. If I close my eyes and someone put it in my mouth, I think I would have no problem with the taste or texture and it’s pretty tasty. Just the look is a bit intimidating for me. I just assume this kind of feeling is similar to someone who never had sushi and thought of eating raw fish scares them.

The duck blood cake though is brand new for me. First of all, I am still not used to the word “blood” in the food. I can’t think of any Japanese food that has blood in the name. However, I think both the flavor and the texture of the blood cake were “acceptable”. It’s sticky and reminds me of Asian mochi texture (not quite Japanese mochi) but somewhat hard like Yokan (Japanese red bean jelly). It’s very hard to describe. It’s probably not something that I would say “oh it’s so delicious! I want more!!!” but I could eat it. It’s still new food to me that I need some time to get used to it.

5. Stinky Tofu

Stinky tofu is probably the very first Taiwanese street food that Mr. JOC introduced to me. I eat Natto (Japanese fermented soybeans) and I don’t consider natto that stinky (you might disagree with me haha!).

But stinky tofu is a whole another level of stinkiness. I could usually smell it in the air even if the vendor is quite far away. How stinky? I always describe it politely as “farm smell”. You know when you go to a farm and there are barn animals… exactly that kind of smell. So it’s like eating deep fried firm tofu in the middle of farm with lots of farm animals. Now after being married 10 plus years and eating stinky tofu on my trips to Taiwan, I actually enjoy the dish.

There are many variations for stinky tofu but I would only eat it served with good pickled cabbages. My favorite stinky tofu shop in Kaohsiung is called 江豪记臭豆腐 (KING OF STINKY TOFU) and if you want to try it for the first time, try this place before eating at night market because it’s more “refined”. 😉

Do you like fermented and stinky foods like cheese, tofu, soybeans?

Bonus: Papaya Milk!

This local Kaohsiung drink shop is so popular, serving many different kinds of fruity milk drinks and they are all refreshing and delicious. It’s something I look forward to at Taiwan night market. The papaya milk has just the perfect sweetness and I love it. In our daily life, we don’t often get to eat sweet papaya in San Francisco, so we definitely take advantage of the abundance of fruits when we’re in Taiwan. It’s just all the different types of delicious fruits Taiwan has to offer. So don’t miss it!

I hope you enjoyed reading a quick glance at what Taiwan Night Market has to offer. If you want to jump on and read more of my travel posts, click here.

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For your first travel vlog i think the choices of dishes was a huge departure from what you write and show normally. It seems like you didnt even like most of what you tasted and that inhibited your ability to communicate the texture, flavours and aroma. The filming of the cooking and components of the dishes was good and interesting….but snake, duck tongue, …..ick! Not appetising for me. Keep trying!

Hi Lynn! Sorry my English is not good enough to describe in details. Which is one of the reasons why I don’t usually go in front of the camera… plus I am afraid my readers won’t understand my strong English accent (Mr. JOC added caption for that). I’ll try to improve my English! The blood cake was probably the only one that tasted “okay” and not my favorite, but the rest of foods tasted pretty good thanks to the seasonings as I mentioned in the video though. If it wasn’t JOC readers’ requests, I wouldn’t have pushed myself to try some foods…. so it was a new experience for me.

I enjoyed it very much and this blog post accompanies it really well. It can be intimidating for first timers at a night market, when you feel like you have to try everything but not sure how or where to start. I think it’s great that you tried a selection of foods, even things that you weren’t a big fan of. I’m not sure I could be as adventurous, and I now know to avoid snake as I’m a lazy eater when it comes to bones!

Thanks for the informative and interesting vlog and I look forward to seeing the next one!

Hi Mapes! Thank you for your encouraging words! I normally skip all those unique ones but I am glad I tried them. I felt like I tried it with my JOC readers… as they requested. 🙂 I’m glad most of them tasted pretty good! 😀

Hi, Loved your vlog from Taiwan! To me, it felt as if I was there, enjoying all the sights and sounds and the food food food! Thank you! Please do more of these. We don’t get to experience such exotic foods in Chicago! Thank you!!

Hi Ged! Thank you very much! Japanese eat some interesting foods too, but I think a lot of street foods in Taiwan were something new to me. I got to experience interesting foods thanks to JOC readers’ requests. I’m glad I did it! 🙂

Hi Linda! I know, the thought or image of snake was a bit scary, but if I close my eyes…and shut off my imagination, it really was like chicken…. you need to focus on NOT focusing on the image of snake, only if you need to try the dish. 😉

So far I liked the first vlog: + the video gives a sense of orientation and environment. Allowing others to see this enables them to explore visually what you filmed and talked about, rather than just read up on the information; + nice video clips of the food tasting – it gives us a perspective on how good the food was with your verbal description and facial expression on your joy on the taste. The latter was pretty amusing when you had this critical look while chewing the duck blood cake – I find it hard to grasp that it would taste nice! + you introduce more a local community on food, which is one of the many things people get more exposed to when travelling, at least I find; + was great seeing the cooks prepare the dishes to get an impression on the service and quality of the food from the preparation.

I think you two did a good job about the vlog for a first time. Here are just some thoughts I had to consider (you can think about them but don’t necessarily need to take my word for it): + it might look strange to the people around but having a small microphone attached to your jacket or top might be useful so that your voice can overtone the background sound. It was good that subtitles were included around those directly spoken parts to be sure that your viewers could receive the info, just in case they didn’t hear it correctly; + considering that both of you are involved in this – you and Mr. JOC – it would be nice to see him in the clips as well to see what his thoughts were to the food – would’ve been fun seeing his facial expression on duck blood cake 😉 ;

If I can think of more comments – which I can’t think of now, but might do later (happens all the time like that) – I’ll repost a comment here.

Oh Leo, thank you so much for your great feedback!!!!! I truly appreciate it! I’ll write back one by one. 🙂

1) You’re right! Now that I think about it, one video shows so much more than one post. The viewer can see other things beyond what I wrote in the post. 🙂

2) It tasted “ok” and I “could” eat it once again, but it’s definitely not my favorite. I had to focus not thinking about what is made of when I was tasting. 😀

3) The night markets are for locals and visitors. I’m glad I could show some parts of it and my experience through the video.

4) Right, definitely a movie helps to show the entire process.

5) We didn’t plan on vlogging so we didn’t bring a microphone from the US. We went to 5+ electronic stores to look for the right kind of microphone but none of stores carried it… so until we came back to the US and see the footage, we had no idea if those footage was useful because we took everything with just iphone! I was actually surprised it was “decent”! Not the best though.

6) I was asking Mr. JOC if he can do it instead of me, especially the talking part… but he always prefer me to be the solo face of JOC… but thanks for your request. I’ll tell him! 🙂

*smile* When a was a little bubby gal and sick with the usual childhood diseases, my darling Dad just had to get my Grandmom in the country to kill a pig to make pig blood pancakes and sausages . . . and I would be guaranteed to be well in no time 🙂 !! Honest injun: in N Europe 🙂 !!! Yum for the tongue: I cook a calves’ one or two every few weeks . . .So, no problems at all with your Taiwanese choices – well, perchance natto is the one at which I just may baulk 🙂 ! Wonderful send!!!!!!

Hi Eha! Ahahaha! Thank you for sharing your story of your childhood! It’s always fun to learn about other culture and food. I know, Natto is really weird and strange food, isn’t it. 🙂 Thanks for watching this video!